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Ive been thinking...
Mattius
Member Posts: 167
With the plethora of new online games coming out this year, and the likelihood that several will be quite good, how much loyalty can companies actually expect from their fanbase.
Not that long ago you had a choice basically between EQ and UO for most english speaking players. Now that has diversified into many more, Asherons, AO, Horizons, SB, ,DAOC, Final Fantasy.....probably a dozen in total, all of which are quite good in their own right....ya sure you might not like em...even hate em...but basically where talking about games that are rated 7 or more on this site, and thats quite a few games, not too mention a few big titles coming out on the consoles, both MS and Sony have announced and completed MMOGS....AND what were formerly known as mainly Asian titles are also being systematically ported/overhauled/modified for U.S/European audience.
Add it all up and its A LOT of games. There is already a strong arguement that the market has been flooded or is in process of being saturated, by the end of 2004 i have no doubt that will be the case, and the arguement has also been made that the player base is simply not big enough to maintain those games atm....so the next question is loyalty from the players that will be around.
I played UO for almost 3 years, i played AO for about 9 months, and as of writing this im trying Planetside and plan to try Horizons...then UOX and WoW...Obviously i cant play all these games simultaneosly so while a player may like a particular game, just how long are they going to stick with it?
The days of playing a online game for 3, 4 or 5 years i think are over. People are likely to switch games as often as every few months in my opinion, which makes the job of developers and publishers much much harder.
You might invest a lot of time into these games, and not the long ago it might have taken a whole lotta nerfage and terrible design decisions to force you to leave, soon it might only take a bad experience with a CS representative....or a particular nerf that you really dislike, before you decide to give that other game a try...
Whats everyone else think...
Comments
There was an unexpected (by some) phenomenon that took place when AC and AO hit the market in the wake of EQ's dominance. It was expected that the MMOG market was a finite number of dedicated players, and expected result of AC and AO was that the market would thin, as the pool of players would no doubt not double-dip the expense across more than one MMOG.
But this didn't turn out to be true. In fact, EverQuest's population continued to rise. UO resurged, and the new MMOGs were seeing modest but healthy gains. I recall later that one of SOE's spokespersons surmised the reasoning behind this to be that each release not only increased the market share by bringing in fresh faces, but that people were holding multiple accounts. For many, the multiple accounts was often "I love my char too much, and I don't know if I'm really leaving yet." And in many cases, people never really left...but sustained multiple accounts.
There's no question in my mind that we will eventually reach a true saturation point. But at the same time, the more options people have on the table the more loyalty really does become the issue. It's going to come down to what game world you like the most, and what system of gameplay you find the most entertaining. But right now, I think there's room for a whole lot more. I mean at least another 20+ before it becomes overly saturated.
I think the companies that seem intent on making a fast buck from MMORPGs are gonna be disapointed. Player loyalty is a big issue and the only way they can guarentee it is through innovation. If you just churn out games to a formula then people will get bored quickly.
I think there are companies out there who intend to innovate but a developers vision can be scuppered by a publisher and marketing people in the blink of an eye.
I guess that's the way of the games industry these days, minimum investment for maximum return. The big publishers aren't prepared to let developers express themselves and spend four or five years on a game and see what they envisiged through.
Hopefully we'll see the MMORPG market crash and we'll be left with a handfull of companies they are prepared to take risks and give us something worth spending a bit of time playing.
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Don't jump off the roof Dad
You'll make a hole in the yard
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